Elizabeth "Bo" Black was 21 in 1967, a student and a cheerleader at University of Wisconsin-Madison, when the people from Playboy magazine showed up, scouting for a college issue.

She posed in a boathouse wearing a short brown skirt and a yellow turtleneck sweater, hardly Playboy attire. She was paid $25.

She did not tell her parents.

“My mother would have had a fit,” Bo said. She was a good Catholic girl. She went to Mass every day.

Then someone from Playboy called the house.

They liked Bo's boathouse photos and they wanted her to pose for the cover.

Elizabeth "Bo" Black, 72, of Scottsdale, appeared on the cover of Playboy magazine in 1967.(Photo: Courtesy of Michael Sutton Photography)

“What are you doing?” said her mother, who had answered the phone.

In the end, Bo’s parents agreed she could go to Chicago for the photo shoot — if she kept her clothes on.

Bo appeared on the September cover, wearing a green football jersey and knee-high athletic socks with a helmet tucked under her arm. She was paid $100. She could have earned $5,000, but only if she posed nude.

“Are you kidding? I wanted to be a nun!”

Bo didn’t become a nun but graduated in 1969 and got a teaching certificate.

She taught math, sang in the Skylight Music Theatre in Milwaukee and was the executive director of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

“I lived in fear it would come up,” Bo says.

For the 50th anniversary of the magazine, the picture surfaced again, on T-shirts, lights and shower curtains. This T-shirt was available at Wal-Mart.(Photo: via Walmart.com)

It did, in newspaper articles when she became an assistant to Mayor Henry Maier and again when she became executive director of Summerfest music festival.

Nobody seemed to care. A columnist at the Milwaukee Journal wrote that she was qualified for the job. That was all that mattered.

It was all that mattered. Bo rubbed elbows with celebrities and politicians, raised money for scholarships and children’s hospitals, and had a TV talk show.

She is 72 now, a grandmother of four, living in Scottsdale with her husband, Tom Trebelhorn, a former manager of the Milwaukee Brewers.

Someone recognized her at a baseball game once.

“Hey,” the man called, “you were on the cover of Playboy a long time ago!”

And then the moment she knew it wasn't such a big deal: “I’m surprised you’re still alive.”

Reach Bland at karina.bland@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8614. Read more at karinabland.azcentral.com.